No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.'s Way

Ah, another belated review copy from Vivendi, but rather like those
contemptuous cinema ads from the mid-90s, this time... it's
laudable. Indeed, far from a hot potato that nobody wanted, NOLF2
was more like a Kylie calendar to the Eurogamer office, and there
were some pretty ugly scenes when it came to choosing the reviewer.
Fortunately, as a master of ugly scenes I triumphed over adversity,
and now I've triumphed over NOLF2, and, I'm delighted to tell you,
it's a bloody good game.

Who wants to live forever?

Oh, stunning

No One Lives Forever 2 has preserved
everything that we loved about No One Lives Forever (which
we're going to have to abbreviate from now on, partly because
I keep typing 'Livers'), and not only expands on it, but cuts
out all the junk that made it annoying! If only more
developers did this. The only slight irritation is the
adherence to a two-CD strategy. We have had this lovely DVD
format for a long time now, folks - can we please use
it?

Beyond that though, NOLF2 is a technical poster-child. A quick
reference sheet listing all the controls (amazingly in a default
configuration we didn't even have to alter) fell out of the box
when we opened it, and upon installation we were presented with a
simple wizard-style approach to detail levels, and instructed that
Medium would fit our rig best - it did. Like the label on the tin
said, High detail was a bit beyond us. When exactly did PC
developers learn to be honest? Cripes.

So, five comfortable minutes of disc-swapping installation and
configuration later, NOLF2 was up and running, and we sank into the
role of Cate Archer, '60s spy extraordinaire, once again. Cate is
still working for UNITY trying to thwart criminal organisation
HARM's dastardly work, which this time could lead the US and USSR
to nuclear war. Project Omega, as it's known, will have to be
undone in a campaign spanning twelve locations (Japan, America,
India, etc) with forty or so levels to overcome.

Whilst saving the world (again), Cate will run into a number of her
old friends and enemies (everyone from Bruno, Santa and Dr.
Schenker to crazed Scot Magnus Armstrong) and not everyone swings
the same way as last time. Of course there are new and typically
witty additions to the fold, like the teams of mime enemies, led by
a wordless lunatic, and the legions of ninjarettes, who never seem
to give up, even when faced with a tornado in a trailer park...

All around the world

Sneaking is easier without ninjarettes swarming over everything

One of the biggest changes to NOLF2 is the game's newfound
reliance on stealth. An oft-sidelined issue in the first game, Cate
will have to worry a lot more about avoiding detection, and the
game has changed shape considerably to allow for this. Naturally
UNITY has imbued our favourite pink-clothed super spy with all
sorts of new toys and abilities in addition to old faves like the
lipstick stun gun - new toys include a mechanical cat, on-screen
light indicators and an arsenal of new things to distract attentive
HARM employees with. Everything from banana peels and smoke
canisters to a motion-tracking dart gun.

The light indicator pops up when you slide into one of the game's
"hiding places". These aren't marked but they're pretty obvious - a
narrow slit in the wall a few feet away from an enemy position, a
clump of bushes or a dark alleyway, etc - and when you step into
one an eye appears in the middle of the screen and turns from beige
to purple. Once purple, only significant movement, gunfire or
something equally oafish can alert guards to your presence. Other
new abilities allow you to lean round walls using Q and E and haul
enemy bodies off into the gutter and search them for toys - the
primary method for uncovering pick-ups in NOLF2.

However well the stealth works in some areas though, it's let down
in others by shabby enemy AI and other shortfalls. Despite an
on-screen radar alerting you to mission objectives and so on,
there's no MGS2-style field of view for enemy soldiers, and they
can't always see you moving even if you're only a few metres away
directly in front of them. Your own speed and positioning (and
avoidance of bottles and other loud nuisances) is far more
important. Although you could let it go simply as 'another
approach', we prefer fields of view and more MGS2/Splinter Cell
style stealth mechanics.

That said, the enemy AI perks up once they've seen you.
Henchmen/women gang up on you, scooting through shortcuts if you
try to run and even ambushing you. Sadly they still do stupid
things, like running up and standing in exactly the same spot as a
downed enemy, so you don't even have to adjust your sniper scope
later on, but on the whole the effect stands up, and this being a
NOLF game, you can always put it all down to their stupidity as
henchpeople. If their spoken dialogue (often alerting you to hidden
intel, mess hall 'issues' and female ninja sleeping habits) is
anything to go by, they're far too pre-occupied to spot Cate
waltzing slowly through their line of sight anyway.

Perks 'r' Us

Bananas - a nutricious part of any spy's inventory

Level design is fairly flexible and non-linear, with
objectives scripted tightly around finding particular items,
which are sometimes chained together. Finding a power coupling
to restore the power to open a door can be boring and we're
pretty sure this was the mainstay of games that pre-dated
Half-Life, but if you can overlook the at-times identikit FPS
level design, then you're in for a treat. Unfortunately it's a
treat you'll earn at the expense of much backtracking
(particularly in the larger levels) simply because you missed
that one shred of paper or critical dropbox. Turning that one
upside down, another of NOLF2's flaws is the way that
presently indecipherable but clearly portable items can't
often be moved - something borne out in the very first level
in fact. Scooting through a Japanese village, we missed the
briefcase containing the decoder, and thus the three
question-marked papers we found dotted around had to be
revisited once we had. Simply scooping them up and then
applying the decoder in the menu would have been a bit
easier...

Thankfully, Monolith clearly understands that simply dipping NOLF
in an MGS2 acid bath isn't likely to result in a suitable
successor, and from hereon in the list of flaws grows short. And
for every wrong in NOLF2 there seems to be a right anyway - like,
in this case, the presence of a compass to track objectives, and an
excellent inventory system. Right-click is your use button,
context-sensitive, and the inventory, intelligence and weapons
menus are all almost seamlessly integrated - available with
one-button stab at any point.

Another key improvement is the skill system. You earn skill points
throughout NOLF2 for collecting intelligence, killing enemies,
avoiding detection, finding secrets and lots more, and from these
you can boost your marksmanship, speed, accuracy, gadget skills,
you name it. Skill points also provide a nice incentive to scour
the world for bonus items - and the game is undoubtedly a lot more
engrossing and enjoyable if you do try and find every last scrap of
intel to flesh out the story. More often than not you'll get a
laugh for your efforts too.

Got Lith?

Mad folk. Mad.

And like an invisible car in an ice
palace to all that has come before, NOLF2 looks stunning.
We've not always been a bit fan of the Lithtech engine, mostly
thanks to atrocities committed during its early years, but the
draw distance, level of architectural detail and smooth
running of this engine really helped keep NOLF2 in our good
books. Just through choosing the appropriate settings at the
beginning (literally four or five button-clicks), We ended up
with a perfect balance all the way through.

Even in the medium detail bracket (which we reckon is about where
the average rig will fall), the buildings, swaying grass, explosive
waterfalls, rippling reflections, real-time lighting and shadowing
and emotionally active characters help shape a world of pleasant
cartoon depth. We were particularly taken with the use of eyes,
which move individually and often prompt some amusing "he's behind
you" visual cues and eye-rolling at the cringeworthy script!
Character movement in general is also well handled, and weapon
designs and other incidental details are lovingly treated. And the
mechanical cat mews occasionally - bonus.

In another boon over the original, extensive, pointless cut
sequences have been dropped in favour of curt, relevant ones, and
the rather boring Santa's Workshop escapades have been axed
entirely. Santa's back of course, but now he chats to you via
mechanical birds with glowing green eyes which pop up throughout
the game. Nauseatingly cute and Austin Powers-style funny.

So, NOLF2 has most things licked - presentation, visuals, stealth,
level design, longevity. Anything else? Oh well yes, there's also a
nice little co-operative campaign mixing various bits of the
single-player game into a short-lived adventure, and the deathmatch
mode is straightforward and entertaining. However we reckon that
given the way the PC FPS genre has behaved lately, NOLF2 will skip
off into multiplayer obscurity pretty quickly.

Conclusion

All in all, your mission-should-you-choose-to-accept-it is a very
enjoyable one. There are more spy film clichés than the 1960s
managed and more dodgy accents than you'll see on the panto stage
this Christmas, but NOLF2 is an excellent game nonetheless. Flawed
in places? Yes, thanks to backtracking, repetition and some curious
design decisions, but fans of the original should be flicking coins
across counters to distract shop assistants immediately, and if you
like first person shooters and have a sense of humour, the only
other thing to stop you playing this game is the central role of a
pink-suited woman. Are you man enough?

8
/
10

Read the Eurogamer.net reviews policyNo One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.'s WayTom BramwellReview - another tardy Vivendi game, but this time it's a good'un!2002-12-24T09:59:00+00:00810